Artwork Guidelines

Our art department can create artwork from your ideas or sketches. You can also submit your own designs for us to produce. If you provide hand drawn art please make it crisp black and white. We recommend drawing with gel pen or fine line sharpie. If needed, provide an additional color copy. You may submit logos of businesses or other organizations to us for use in your order. Most of these organizations can provide us with their logo in the formats described below. We can accept artwork created by a variety of artwork programs and in several image file formats. To save you time and effort it is very important that you read below or speak with our art department before creating any artwork for submission. Charges may apply for time spent re-drawing any art submitted at a rate of $25 per hour.

Guidelines for Submission of Electronic Artwork

Accepted File Types:
Windows PC files Preferred. If file was created on a MAC please ensure that it is saved for a PC. All Type or Text must be converted to curves or outlines to prevent the need for us to have your exact font.

CorelDraw X4. (Windows PC)All Type or Text must first be converted to outlines. Images of photos or drawings placed into this file may not be useable.

Adobe Illustrator 8.0 (Windows PC).All text must be converted to outlines. Images of photos or drawings placed into this file may not be useable.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (Windows PC).Black and white outlines. Image print size should be aprox 4″x4″ for small designs and 12″x12″ for larger designs, not to exceed 13″wX15″h. Resolution should be 300 dpi. If art created in Photoshop please send .PSD file with layers and rasterize all text layers or submit all fonts used.

Other files that may be accepted.Occasionally we can work with the following files:

high resolution .TIFF or .JPG (see specs of photoshop above)

Windows meta file .WMF or .EMF

.PDF files

.EPS file which most other graphic software can export ( text must be converted to outlines ).
If possible send two files [ one of the accepted formats and a smaller .jpg for reference]
Photoshop .eps files are raster files should meet our Photoshop requirements.

A minimum $25 fee PER LOGO will be considered for any logo that requires work because it does not meet the criteria listed above.

Sending file types on disk, through e-mail
Artwork may be sent via the US post office THOUGH UPS, or FED EX . We accept 3.5″ floppy, 100mb ZIP disks or CD ROM’s in PC format.

E-MAIL ARTWORK TO your sales representative or directly to the art department If you are sending more than one file please use stuff-it or WinZip to combine and compress all files into one OR send one email message with only one file attached to it at a time.

Final Artwork Approval
When art is finished our art department will send you a proof via e-mail or snail mail, the choice is yours. The art department will wait to receive a reply from you regarding any changes or questions. Upon approval, your job will then be scheduled for production.

If there are any questions regarding these guidelines please contact us.

Raster vs Vector Art, why we prefer vector.

vector art files are graphics made up of outlines and curves. The benefit is these graphics is they can be enlarged indefinitely with little to no distortion. This kind of art is the ideal form for any printing and graphics business. popular file types are listed below.

Postscript file [EPS]

Adobe Illustrator [AI]

Corel Draw [CDR]

Windows meta file [WMF]

Enhanced meta file [EMF]

Scalable Vector Graphic [SVG] *

Raster images are made up of tiny little pixels or dots which blend together to create an image. Most internet graphics are raster images, JPG’S and GIF’S are the 2 main types of web page image formats. These files are low resolution and compressed to reduce file size, this also diminishes image quality. On a computer monitor these images appear crisp and clean, however, when they are enlarged for printing the end result is bumpy, fuzzy, blury and pixelated image. Our art department can use these images as reference for re-drawing. TIFF’s, PSD’s and BITMAP files are another type of raster image. When created to the actual print size and with a high resolution (300dpi) are acceptable to use for printing. These files are ideal for multi color prints (such as photographs) that include shadows, shading and blending.

* Here is a list of inexpensive software that is used in vector art creation.